Attrition

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Teacher Retention and the Economy: An Example from Colorado

How high is teacher attrition? How much does it change over time, and why? We don’t have great answers to these questions, but a story and graphic from Chalkbeat Colorado helps provide some tentative answers.
Chalkbeat’s story covered a newly released dataset from the Colorado Department of Education tracking teacher retention rates over the last 15 years.* The article featured a graph showing changes over time; I’ve reproduced it below with some slight modifications.

Two things jumped out at me when I saw this chart. First, although teacher attrition goes up and down somewhat year-to-year, it was nearly identical in 2013-14 as it was in 2001-2 and 2005-6. From high to low and back again, teacher attrition in Colorado has stayed in a relatively small band of 3-4 percentage points. (Note that the graph’s y-axis accentuates these changes. If the graph started at 0 percent, the changes would look even smaller.)
Second, note what happens during recessions. I added the vertical gray bars to correspond to the school years in which a recession hits (using the official NBER recession dates). As the economy contracts and it becomes harder to find gainful employment, fewer Colorado teachers leave their jobs. The deeper, longer recession after the financial meltdown in 2007-9 appears related to even lower teacher attrition rates. And then, as the economy begins to expand, teacher attrition rates start climbing again. There’s a natural cycle of teacher mobility in Colorado, and it seems to be tied to the larger, national economic picture.

http://educationnext.org/teacher-retention-economy-example-colorado/

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